


August is a Blessing

by weezly14



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Kid Fic, with a healthy serving of angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1365514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weezly14/pseuds/weezly14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Because even though I knew he loved us, I could never be sure that, given the chance to do it all over again, he wouldn't make a different choice."</p>
            </blockquote>





	August is a Blessing

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of an exploration that anything else. I wanted to play with this idea I got at work one day (because dish duty leaves you with nothing but time to think). 
> 
> Because I think season 2 Doctor and Rose probably would've made shitty parents. Not for lacking of trying but just - 
> 
> And I think we like to write the Doctor as a Good Dad (I know I do), but I wanted to play with the idea of him maybe actually being kind of shitty at it. Again, not for lack of trying. Just - 
> 
> So this isn't a head canon or anything, just a story I wanted to try. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Title and lyric at the beginning from "August is a Blessing" by Aaron Lee Tasjan.

_there are endings to all things_  
beginnings  
secrets to tell 

\---

He was a dad, once, it’s true, but he never expected it to happen again. 

So when Rose suggests it—

Looking back (and hindsight’s always 20/20, isn’t it?), he’s not sure he really understood what he was saying yes to. 

He thinks they thought of it like you think of playing house. A game, an experiment, a new adventure. 

Only it wasn’t playing house, because they weren’t dolls, they were people, real living people they made, with thoughts and feelings and desires. Knees that could be skinned and hearts that could be broken. 

He was a dad, once, and he thinks that means he should’ve done better the second time around, but you know what they say about leopards and their spots. 

\--- 

She’s not really sure what compelled her to bring it up to him. 

She supposes it was something like naïveté, something to do with being so in love and so young—something about not wanting to have any regrets. 

Because she was going to spend the rest of her life with him, she was certain, and she was prepared for whatever that meant. She knew it probably wouldn’t look like she’d thought grown up life looked like when she was a little girl, and she was okay with that. 

All the same, she didn’t want to look back one and day and wonder what if, because even thought he might say no—he might not. 

And the risk of asking seemed worth it. 

\---

It’s a toss up, really, who’s more surprised when he says yes.

\--- 

And it’s an experiment, really, a new adventure for him—there was always something about street corners at 2 in the morning that appealed to him, houses with carpets and doors, and maybe it was only because it seemed so out of reach—

Maybe his “I don’t do domestics” came not from a distaste for it, but a resentment that he couldn’t have it. 

So when Rose suggests it—

\--- 

But it’s not just a baby. She’s got her mum. She can’t leave her. And she wants—ridiculous as it is, she wants it all the human way. A flat, a job, picking a school, parent teacher conferences. 

She’s sure he’ll change his mind but he doesn’t, actually. They iron out the logistics, and then it’s settled. 

They’re going to have a baby. They’re going to try. 

\--- 

And maybe it’s because he never thought he could have it, maybe because he knew it would be so different from his own experience, his own childhood—

He agrees to what she lays out. A flat where they can park the TARDIS, a proper address so they can receive the post. A job so they can buy groceries and nappies and whatever else you need to take care of a family. 

Weekend adventures in the TARDIS of course—can’t just shove aside their lifestyle, can’t deny their child this piece of its heritage—and date nights where they can go out and be the Doctor and Rose again while Jackie babysits. 

It all seems so simple, so easy, so exciting. A chance to play at house. To play at being human. An opportunity to be Dad, not Doctor. A life where the fate of the world doesn’t rest on his shoulders. Just the livelihood of this child. His child. 

\--- 

They get a flat, they get jobs—they move in and get settled. All the while waiting. 

\--- 

And maybe it’s just a primitive sort of thing, a desire to stake his claim, but he finds, in those first few weeks—he wants to do it all, properly. 

So he goes out, and he buys a ring, and he proposes, because this is the human way, isn’t it? There’s something about it that’s so foreign to him but not altogether unpleasant, and he’s so far out of his depth but—

He finds he wants to marry her, wants her to wear this ring he gave her, to take his (fake) name. He wants to say, this is my wife, wants other people to know that she is his, that she has promised her forever to _him_. He may not be able to spend the rest of his life with her (a reality he avoids thinking about as much as possible), but she can spend hers with him. 

And if she’ll do it? If she’ll agree? 

He’ll take it. 

However selfish that may be. 

\--- 

So, really, the whole thing starts with the both of them saying yes. 

\--- 

He gets anxious, sometimes, though. Overwhelmed. Carpets and a lease and dishes in the sink and the test was negative and it’s been months and can he really do this?

Can they really do this?

\--- 

After one particularly bad row he storms off to the TARDIS—which isn’t quite storming out of the flat, but it’s their equivalent. 

And she waits a bit before coming after him, and finds him in the garden, sulking. 

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” she tells him, sinking down on the grass beside him. 

He doesn’t say anything. 

“Not pregnant yet. We can pack up, move on. Say we tried.”

She’s giving him an out. 

He knows she wouldn’t hold it against him if he took it. 

Knows she never expected him to agree in the first place. 

(He doesn’t tell her that when he agreed he wasn’t even sure if they _could_ have children. That he’d wanted it enough, had been taken enough by the idea that he agreed right then, and later went back and ran tests.)

(He doesn’t tell her that it wasn’t until his tests came back positive, confirming that they _could_ conceive naturally—that until then he hadn’t realized how much he wanted it.)

(That his anxiety isn’t from the flat or the bills or the everyday mundanity—it’s from the fact that it still might not happen, and he wants it more than he knows how to express.)

She reaches for his hand. 

“Talk to me.”

And it’s new, it’s all new—this humanness, having a job, groceries, making dinner, _marriage_ , they’re getting _married_ soon—eventually—whenever they—and it’s not just a relationship, it’s a—a—and the weight of it, it’s a different weight than he’s used to but it’s still—and she—

She’s learning, too. They both are.

He looks down at their twined fingers. 

“I want this,” he says. “I don’t want to give up and move on.”

“It’s okay if you do.”

And what did he ever do to deserve her?

“I don’t.”

And he means it. 

(He hopes she knows he means it.)

“Okay.” 

He kisses her, then, and they don’t leave the garden for a very long time. 

\--- 

She misses her next period, and the test comes back positive, and it’s real, it’s all real. 

\--- 

He wears his suit and she wears a white dress and it’s not much, but it’s official. She’s his wife and he’s her husband, and they have a flat and a lease and a baby on the way, and if you’d asked him, 400 years ago, if he thought this would happen—if you’d asked him two years ago—

\--- 

She hadn’t really expected him to do the whole doctor’s visits thing. She knew some blokes went, but she knew most didn’t. And she wouldn’t have held it against him, but he was so enthusiastic—of course he would go with her to her appointments—and she expects the enthusiasm to fade, somehow, expects him to grow tired of it. 

And he tells her they don’t need to go to the doctor’s, because there’s the TARDIS, and he’s him, but she wants to do this the human way, and that means check ups and vitamins and ultrasounds, and he’s embracing the whole experience, trying to be as thorough as possible, so convincing him to go along with it really doesn’t take much. 

She wonders, a bit, if she should be concerned. He gets so—he can be so clinical, sometimes. Such a scientist. And she knows that this is, at least partly, an experiment for him. She forgets he’s not human sometimes, and then he’ll say or do something and she remembers, and she wants him to enjoy this life—she wants him to love their child for being their child, not just treat it like something to study. 

And she thinks, in those moments, that she’s being too hard on him. Of course he’ll love their child. Of course he will. 

So he goes with her, that first doctor’s appointment—having assured her that the baby would be more human than Time Lord, would have one heart, a normal lifespan—that the Time Lord traits would be like recessive genes, not dominant ones—that they had nothing to worry about, in seeing a twenty-first century doctor. 

And he sits with her in the waiting room, hand holding hers, fingers brushing over her ring as he reads a parenting magazine, glancing up at her with a grin when the nurse calls “Rose Smith.”

It’s all rather clinical, even still. A room with medical equipment and old posters on the wall showing the development of fetuses and such, a sink with soap and sanitizer, a chair for the Doctor to sit in, and then the doctor’s walking with and she’s lifting her shirt to expose her skin and there’s a cool gel and a screen coming to life and the Doctor’s holding her hand and it’s going to be okay, isn’t it? They can do this. They are doing this. It’ll be all right. 

So when the sound of their child’s heartbeat fills the room—when it’s a double heartbeat—she glances at him, panicked, and finds he looks about how she feels, and she’s trying to think of something to say, some excuse, anything to get them out of the room before the doctor can call in his colleagues, before they’re rounded off and sent off for testing—

But then the doctor turns the screen towards them and smiles. 

“Congratulations. You’re having twins.”

\--- 

Two little specks—two dots on a screen. A double heart beat. 

His children. 

\--- 

They decide to each pick a name. 

She picks Peter. 

He picks Susan. 

“My granddaughter’s name was Susan,” he tells her one night, and it’s the most he’s told her about his past—about his first pass at fatherhood. At family. 

He doesn’t tell her he was rubbish at it. He thinks she knows. 

He doesn’t tell her he love her for giving him another chance, for wanting _him_ to be the father of her children—for trusting him with that. 

He thinks she knows that, too. 

\--- 

She never thought she’d have twins—never thought she’d have this life, with him. 

Sometimes he brings her flowers on his way home from work, and one afternoon he gets the nursery ready. Puts the cribs together. Goes with her to choose the bedding. Buy bottles. 

His Time Lord brain, hundreds of years of life, and now he’s painting the walls of the guest room and attaching a mobile to the side of a crib he just assembled, hair messy and wedding ring glinting in the light. 

\--- 

He wants her to deliver on the TARDIS. In case anything goes wrong—he trusts himself and sort of technology on his ship more than he trusts Doctor McMillan. But Rose is insistent—the human way. 

But if something happens—if he loses her—

And he has no illusions. He knows—he _knows_ that if something were to go wrong—(and he knows that’s a terribly morbid thought to have, but childbirth is serious business, and twins?)—if he lost Rose he’d leave. He’d leave the children with Jackie and go. Visit on holidays and birthdays, send cards and elaborate gifts, ensure that they went to the best schools with the best teachers, wanted for nothing. He would be an absent father. 

He knows that if he lost Rose to them, he would never forgive them for it. 

(He wonders—not for the first time since they found out—if he’s really cut out for fatherhood.)

(It’s a bit late for second guessing, though, isn’t it?)

\--- 

In the end, he doesn’t lose Rose. 

But they almost lose Susan. 

\--- 

Peter is born first. Healthy and screaming and everything a newborn baby should be. But there’s a problem with Susan, and the doctors clear the room—and they try to clear _him_ of it, too, which he will absolutely not stand for, and he’s railing against them, fighting against the male nurses trying to drag him out—

“That’s _my_ wife, _my_ —”

“You’re upsetting Rose, Mr. Smith—”

And he’s about to bite back that he’s pretty sure Rose is upset because their daughter might be dying but his voice catches on that word and he lets them shove him out, and he sinks down onto the floor, and is this what being human is like? Trapped in a hospital corridor when on the other side of that wall the people you love most in the world could be dying, knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it?

And he runs over the scenarios, considers how great a paradox he would create f he ran to the TARDIS and insisted to his past self that Rose have a c-section, ignore the articles and the books—a c-section, because Susan—

And he wonders if it isn’t his fault, if he didn’t curse their daughter from the start, because he lost his first Susan and maybe he was never meant to have one, not to keep—maybe he was always meant to lose her, and here he’s—

And he has no idea how long he’s there, he’s always felt timelines but all he feels is anger and confusion and anxiety, and then the door is opening and the doctors are letting him back inside and _Rose_ —

There are two little bundles in her arms. 

He rushes to her.

“They made me leave, I didn’t—”

“Shh,” she says, and he kisses her forehead and she looks so exhausted and so beautiful, and she has her children in her arms—their _children ___, both of them. Alive.

“This is Peter,” she says of the bundle in blue, “And this is Susan.” 

And he takes Susan from her, carefully, as though she might break— 

His little girl. 


End file.
